Poultry News

CME: Meat Demand Maintains Annual Increase

04 January 2012

US - 2011 ended with a piece of good news as the National
Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index (RPI)
for November hit a five-month high, indicating a continuing
rebound for the foodservice sector. It also showed that US beef, pork and
chicken demand are maintaining year-on-year increase as of
October, write Steve Meyer and Len Steiner.

These indexes, which we compute monthly, appear in
the chart below. All observations except the last represent
calendar year changes from the year before. The final observation
in each series represents the 12 month period from November 2010
to October 2011, the last month for which data are available.

The indexes represent overall domestic consumer level
demand for each protein since they are based on per capita consumption and real retail prices. “What about foodservice product?”
is a usual, and legitimate, question when we mention that retail
prices are used in the index calculations.

The retail price is used
for two reasons. First, there are no data for the price of foodservice
protein components that, to our knowledge, are publicly available.

Second, the retail price should be a shadow value of product sold
through foodservice in that any increase in foodservice volume will
reduce the volume available through retail outlets and thus push
retail prices higher.

If readers see the latter as rationalisation, we
will have to plead guilty. The fact remains that no other data are
available.

The trailing-twelve-month indexes for bot pork and chicken
declined when October data were added as the October year-onyear index changes for both species were negative.

Chicken demand in October was six per cent lower than in October 2010 while pork
demand was down 4.6 per cent, Oct ‘10 to Oct ‘11. The October 2011
beef demand index was 0.9 per cent higher than one year earlier.